In the past two years we accomplished advances. The first is to create the first hard x-ray gratings of 200 nm period that can be used to construct a highly sensitive x-ray phase contrast imaging device; the second is to develop the second generation gratings of higher quality and much reduced cost for use in bench-top systems. The first milestone was reached in collaboration with prof. Douglas Wolfe of Penn State University, leading to an ultra-sensitive imaging system on the 2-BM-B beamline of the Advanced Photon Source of Argonne National Laboratory in collaboration with Dr. Francesco De Carlo. The second milestone was reached in collaboration with Nanofab Facility of CNST, NIST. The second generation gratings are being tested in our laboratory at NIH.